A long sprint by Tobias Foss (Ineos Grenadiers) from a late break of four riders netted the former world time trial champion victory in stage 1 of the Tour of the Alps.
Foss beat Chris Harper (Jayco-AIUIa), Esteban Chaves (EF Education-EasyPost) and Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R) after a quartet of riders attacked from a lead group of favourites close to the finish in Cortina.
Geraint Thomas finished sixth at three seconds, after being part of the major 11-rider selection.
The key move of the 133 stage came on the second and final ascent and descent of the second category Penone climb, which saw the break to go clear.
Tentative attacks by Harper and Foss’ teammate Geraint Thomas shook up the leading move in the closing kilometres, but despite several late surges, Foss was the fastest in a drawn-out sprint, taking both the stage and the top spot on GC.
For both Foss and Ineos Grenadiers, taking an early victory at the Tour of the Alps has major resonance.
It is Foss’ first win in a road race rather than a time trial and the first for the team he only joined last winter. After a slow and disappointing start to the year, the British team have now claimed two wins in as many days following Tom Pidcock’s triumph in the Amstel Gold Race.
It remains to be seen if Foss, not well-known as a climber, can defend his lead in the mountainous five-day race in Italy and Austria. However the presence of Thomas in the front group will certainly ensure the British team will have at least two cards to play in the four days of racing to come.
How it unfolded
Seven riders provided the early entertainment on the opening stage of the Tour of the Alps in the vineyard north of Trento, powering off the front of the peloton even before they had reached the first classified climb of the race, the very long but comparatively gentle cat.3 Andalo.
Kyrlo Tsarenko (Corratec-Vini Fantini), Asier Etxeberria (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Nicklas Pedersen (TDT-Unibet), Mattia Bais and Andrea Garosio (both Polti Kometa), Simon Pellaud (Tudor Pro Cycling) and Masaki Yamamoto (JCL-Team UKYO) forged a move that gained a maximum of four minutes, with Pedersen eventually drifting back to the peloton and the remaining six doing their utmost to keep the bunch at bay.
Ineos Grenadiers, fielding one of the strongest teams in the race, did much of the initial work to keep the half-dozen within a reasonable distance. But the six held a three-minute advantage as they climbed the first of the two ascents of the key climb of the day, the category 2 Penone climb.
The Penone’s 12% lower slopes almost instantly saw Japanese National Champion Yamamoto in trouble, followed by Tsarenko and the gradient clipped almost a minute’s advantage off the breakaway.
No attacks materialised in the peloton but it was reduced to 50 riders, mostly thanks to Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale stepping on the collective accelerator in the second half of the rolling climb.
Come the summit, only Polti-Kometa teammates Bais and Garosio remained ahead of the break, ably conserving a 2:30 advantage as they dived down the technical, twisting descent and onto the much flatter valley floor below.
Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale continued to drive behind, though, lining out the peloton and shredding the gap. Largely as a result, even before Bais and Garosio reached the Penone for a second time, their team car had already been told to pull over and wait for the bunch on the side of the road.
In less than a kilometre of the second assault of the Penone, the Polti-Kometa duo were caught, with Decathlon’s Valentin Paret-Peintre forcing the pace for his leader Ben O’Connor, tucked in just behind.
Closely shadowed by Romain Bardet (Team dsm-fermenich-PostNL), Paret-Peintre’s insistent pressure too a significant toll on the peloton, but most of the main players, including Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) remained in the game in a front group of some 30 riders.
2023 race runner-up Hugh Carthy (EF Education-Easy Post) pushed hard over the summit, with 17 kilometres to go, a move which Bardet and Carthy’s teammate Esteban Chaves were quickest to counter, shattering the front of the race.
The difficult descent further ensured that the splits remained in place, and a group containing Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), Thomas, Harper, Amanuel Ghebreigzhabhier (Lidl-Trek), Bardet and Chaves formed just as the race left the Penone behind for good.
O’Connor then quickly bridged across, along with Juanpe Lopez (Lidl-Trek), Paret-Peintre, Foss (Ineos Grenadiers) and Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious), and the presence of so many top names all but ensured a strong initial collaboration, despite some discussions between Foss and and Lopez and then Thomas and Lopez.
An attack by Harper with three kilometres failed to work out and risked destroying the fragile collaboration, with Movistar doggedly leading the chase.
A long surge by Geraint Thomas proved unsuccessful and it was only when Chaves chanced his arm with one kilometre to go that a group of four went clear: O’Connor, Chaves, Harper and Foss got a gap and didn’t look back.
Chaves went from a long way on the rising finish in Kurtinig but Foss was quick to play his own card, too, and in a sprint that took the four all the way through the twisting, cobbled finishing straight and under the gantries, the Norwegian stayed ahead to win.
Only three seconds separate the four stage leaders from their seven breakaway companions, though, making this early skirmish more a statement of intent than a major battle.
Held entirely in neighbouring Austria, stage 2 from Salorno to Stans could well continue the pattern of an early break and some flurries of GC action late on a category 2 climb, in this case the Gnadenwald, peaking out some 16 kilometres from the finish.
Results
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